put your money where your mouth is
by avatargia
Summary: A re-telling of the First Trial against the Middengard Wyrm — from Rhysand's point of view.


**Synopsis: **A re-telling of the First Trial against the Middengard Wyrm — from Rhysand's point of view.

**Author's Note: **centered around rhysand's thoughts when feyre hunts the middengard wyrm; mostly inspired by that bit in acomaf when when rhys says she reminded him of cassian and that if rhys didn't marry her, cassian would. all of the dialogue is taken from acotar directly.

[i really just couldn't get this scene out of my head. i read the series in like three days for the first time this last week and this chapter was probably one of my all-time favorites. i'm definitely a die-hard feysand girl now. feyre is just such a legend. like holy shit. and rhysand. my baby BOY. so here i am to write this even though i should be working on my original work because i wanted to read this and i couldn't fine one.]

* * *

When they drug Feyre into the cavern the Faerie Queen had fashioned into both her throne room and coliseum, Rhysand forced himself to remain still and silent at the she-devil's side. Locked his limbs, bit his tongue—not even his fingers twitched, though, like the rest of him, they begged to reach out for the girl.

Two of Amarantha's red-skinned guards tossed her to the ground. She fell hard, knees slamming into the mud, and the sons of Autumn Court snickered.

Rage, cold and sharp, flickered through him.

When she arose, she lifted her chin and her upper lip curled. Her legs were trembling, from exhaustion, from fear, but Rhysand felt relief wash over him when he saw that her short time in the darkness hadn't stamped out the fire she'd arrived with. She looked like she was seconds away from hissing like a wild animal and Rhys bit his tongue to hide his smile.

Feyre swallowed and her eyes narrowed, honing in on Amarantha as if she were a hawk. As if it were the Faerie Queen that should be afraid. _You beautiful, perfect girl._

"Well, Feyre," Amarantha crooned after a moment and Rhys's pinky finger twitched at the sound of those two syllables. "Your first task is here. Let us see how deep that human affection of yours runs."

Below the platform, he watched as Feyre's jaw tightened. Teeth ground against teeth and he was sure if he listened closely enough, he could hear the soft sound of her breathing through her nose. She looked to Tamlin who stood on Amarantha's other side and her face hardened even further when she saw that not even an ounce of worry reflected in the High Lord's eyes.

"I took the liberty of learning a few things about you," the she-devil continued and she smiled, her teeth white and sharp and Rhysand pressed back the memory of them scraping the soft skin of his throat. Instead, he focused on Feyre's hair, the way it looked like wheat in summer sun even this far under the earth. "It was only fair, you know."

Feyre removed her soft stare from Tamlin and focused it on Amarantha where it hardened into something lethal.

"I think you'll like this task," she said and with a wave of her hand, the Attor stepped aside to reveal the trench she'd prepared for the task. "Go ahead. Look."

Feyre obliged, shuffling her feet so she could look over the edge. She peered over the lip, her nose wrinkling as she took in the height and size of the walls below. Rhysand stiffened when the Attor placed a calculated push between the girl's shoulders. She stumbled, arms pinwheeling as she searched for _something_ to grab onto, and cried out when the Attor snatched her up with bone-white claws. With only a few beats of its thin wings, the Attor swooped into the trenches and deposited Feyre there before it returned to its perch above Amarantha's head.

"Rhysand tells me you're a huntress," Amarantha drawled, tapping her fingers on the arms of her throne.

He swore he could feel Feyre's heart skip a beat.

Feyre's gaze slid to Rhysand this time and he saw hatred in it. Betrayal. His throat tightened, an apology working its way to his mouth. He swallowed it. _Better this way. Better this way. _And yet all he could think about where those flashes of dream, of foggy memory. There'd been the ones where her delicate hands were covered in paint, blue and red and green, and he'd have rather died before he gave those to Amarantha. But there were also the ones where those same hands hands were blue and red, with cold and the blood of some animal she'd expertly shot down in the woods. A huntress, fearless and wild. He hadn't wanted to give any part of her to Amarantha, but if he had to, he'd give her the one that bit her in the ass.

He longed to tell her that, to tell her he'd done the best he could. But he never would and so she would never know.

"Hunt this."

Gold flashed between fingertips as the faeries began to place their bets. The excitement was palpable, rolling off their bodies in waves. Rhysand's nose scrunched. Such a terrible smell.

_Would her lover finally cave, break his silence, and beg for her life? Would she last five minutes? Longer? _

Rhysand watched, waited for Tamlin to offer up a bet and stake his claim for the female who'd come Under the Mountain to save him. But the High Lord of Spring Court did no such thing. He remained still, pinned under Amarantha's hand as she stroked the inside of his thigh.

_No one believes in you._

The thought raged through him. And he was furious. Surely, Tamlin knew—knew just how deadly and powerful and _hungry_ this female was. Not just for a human but as a being that walked and breathed on this earth. Even through the haze of the wall, he remembered the strain of her biceps as she pulled the string of her bow back. The heavy weight of her breath in the air as it froze. The way she read the wind or an animal's tells. He remembered the way her determination bubbled in her, drove her forward. And he recognized it again in her now.

_No one believes in you._

_I believe in you. _

Rhysand hummed and reached for the purse of gold coins he'd brought with him. He'd never intended to bet, never wanted to even hint to Amarantha that he'd taken an interest in her human entertainment. But—_damn it_—he wasn't going to let her do this without someone who thought she was capable of coming out the other side alive.

Leaning in toward a lesser faerie positioned at his side, he snapped his fingers to get their attention. "Put all of this on the human," he said quietly. "She survives." Amarantha hadn't noticed him. Her attention was focused on Feyre.

The faerie blinked and snorted, as if it were appreciating a joke. "Of course, my lord," they drawled but made no move to take the gold from Rhysand's outstretched hand.

Rhys's eyes flickered to Feyre, who was still taking in her surroundings, battling off her panic as she realized that there was no way out of the pits on her own. Rhysand reached out and stroked the walls of their mind with a single, taloned finger. The faerie shivered, all color draining from their pink face.

"Now," Rhys said. "I won't repeat myself."

The faerie scuttled off without another word but Rhysand could feel their confusion—and their surety that he was about to lose a large sum of gold pieces. Rhysand smirked, settled into his chair, and wiped it away with the back of his hand.

"Release it," Amarantha said, her fingers curling into a fist. A gate was lifted and the creature, that disgustingly pale, slimy thing, slithered out of the dark and into the trenches. Feyre's shoulders rose, her spine stiffening as she too heard the creature approach.

Amarantha clicked her tongue. Feyre's attention snapped to her, her eyes wide and watery with fear. "Run," she said.

The worm writhed its way around a corner and the two slits it had for nostrils flared. It surged forward and Feyre ran.

Feyre moved with a grace and speed that reminded Rhysand of a doe on the run. Her arms, thin and slender, pumped at her sides and she used them to claw at walls as she slowed to round a corner. The crowd cheered and roared as the Wyrm inched closer, its circular rows of teeth grinding and clicking against each other.

She made a series of left turns and Rhys's hand clenched at his side. _What's your plan? _he wondered. _What are you going to do, Feyre darling?_

She slowed, skittered to a stop, and shoved herself into a sliver between the walls that Rhysand hadn't considered before. He wasn't sure he'd blinked since Amarantha released the Wyrm.

Feyre paused in that gap, gasping for air. Rhysand's brow creased and his mouth pressed into a line.

Feyre hadn't paused to catch her breath. The gap was too small. Her shoulders were wedged and the mud was too slick. Without traction, she was stuck, twisting and tearing between the two walls of the trench as Amarantha's monster inched closer.

In his chest, his heart beat as loud and thunderous as a legion of Illyirian wings.

Feyre squirmed and writhed, gagging and sobbing as she clawed at the mud. Something deep in his gut twisted and nausea rolled through him as the sound of her cries echoed through the cavern. The crowd cheered, encouraged by her desperation, and the tips of his pointed ears twitched as he watched her struggle.

The creature was nearing. Only heartbeats away. Feyre dug her fingers into walls and with a sudden burst of strength and a stroke of luck, she popped through to the other side. She landed in the mud, face down, and when she got up, her chest heaving, he couldn't help the small sigh that left his own lips. _There you go, darling. That's how you do it._

He watched the cogs in her head churn for a moment before she began her wild run again. She knew the Wyrm had passed her, left her behind. That it should have seen her and barrelled through the wall and swallowed her whole.

When she unknowingly approached the Wyrm's lair, he finally saw the realization click. _It's blind. _And then, with her speed unchecked and her mind torn elsewhere by the revelation, Feyre fell deep into the creature's home.

She landed in the ankle-deep mud and the spectators let loose a cry of victory. A few of them leaned over the edge to peer at the human and flashed bright, sharp grins when they saw that she was far too short to lift herself out and that it was only a matter of time before the Wyrm arrived and devoured her whole.

Feyre let loose a heavy breath that heaved through her shoulders. He could see the terror settling in, that she was coming to the same realization that the faeries above had. She stumbled back a step, falling further towards the darkness of the tunnel the Wyrm lived in. Rhysand felt his own worry creep back in and he scrambled for an answer, a way that he could help Feyre out of the pit. The urge to throw himself down there rose and he clutched the arms of his chair again until the wood groaned under his grip.

Feyre took a step back and cried out. Then her head whipped down and quickly she dropped down, throwing herself elbow deep in the mud. _What is it, darling? What did you find?_

The faeries beside him booed as she vanished into the tunnel and the Wyrm ventured off to another area of the course, far away from Feyre.

"Feyre," Amarantha sang, her voice a siren's call above the Wyrm's low screech, "you're ruining everyone's fun! Come out!"

Feyre remained where she hid in the Wyrm's feeding grounds. A precious minute ticked by, each second a growing effort to remain where he was seated.

Finally, she emerged. Her face was green and Rhysand could only imagine the horrors she'd seen down in the Middengard's lair. She paced the circumference of the pit, trying to locate the best place to climb. She tried once, twice, before falling back into the mud.

The crowd laughed as her head bowed.

"A mouse in a trap," a lesser fae from the Dawn Court said gleefully, as if he could already feel the gold from his bet weighing heavily in his pocket.

"Need a stepping stool?" a High Fae crowed.

Feyre's head raised. Her eyes pinned the preening faes to their seats and a dangerous flicker of a smile passed over her lips. _What are you planning, you wicked woman?_

Rhysand watched with careful eyes. Watched as Feyre dug those hands into the mud and pulled out several bones, each longer than her own leg. She plunged one into the wall, then another, and he gnawed on the inside of his cheek to contain the burst of glee that shot through him.

_An escape._

"What's it doing? What's it planning?" one of the court members hissed.

Feyre ignored their call, her face pinched as she climbed her bone ladder. His nausea ebbed as he realized she'd found a way out. _Of course she did. _He relaxed into his chair some. He'd worried his gamble had been wrong—that maybe, despite his hopes, she was just a young, human girl who'd never stood a chance against the Middengard Wyrm. That she was only flowers painted onto a kitchen table.

He was so wrong.

But just before she reached the top, Feyre paused. Looked back into the hell she'd climbed out of—and dropped back down.

At this, Rhysand cocked his head to the side. He was not alone as the faeries beside him murmured their dissent.

Feyre plunged her arm back into the mud and retrieved another bone. Steeling her jaw, she brought it down over her knee in one swift motion that broke the bone in two. Rhysand ghosted his fingers over his mouth.

_What are you doing? What plan have you come up with now?_

As if she could hear his thoughts, she looked up and met his gaze. Those two eyes, blue and sharp and as unforgiving as the ice of the Winter Court, pierced through him. His mouth slid into a smile when those eyes narrowed. He could nearly hear the swear on her lips.

She plunged the first half of the bone into the ground, the jagged edge facing up. Did the same with the other half. Reached back into the ground, grabbed another bone, and broke it in half, too. Then ferociously planted its halves.

Feyre repeated her process, ramming the broken bones into the ground after snapping them over her knee. And when her knee was undoubtedly bruised black and too sore to use, she broke them under her foot.

The smile that she'd enticed from him grew into a full-grin. He could easily excuse it as excitement for bet he'd placed, one that would make him quite a bit of money, and as such allowed himself this luxury. Feyre, the human girl who'd come Under the Mountain for the High Lord of Spring, had built a trap for Amarantha's nastiest beast. _Quite the huntress indeed._

Feyre secured several other bones, strapping them to her back like they were Illyrian blades. Then, she climbed her bone ladder again and heaved herself into the open air.

She gasped, pushed herself to her feet, and scowled at the faeries above her like she could smite them with the might of her wrath alone. And even covered in all that mud, smeared from head-to-toe in it, Rhysand was sure he'd never seen anything quite as beautiful and that he'd never love a woman like he loved Feyre in that moment.

Rhysand chuckled to himself when she crouched again and scooped up a handful of mud. She began to smear it across her body, squeeze it into her hair, until she was little more than two blue eyes staring up at him from the dark.

"What's it doing?" the same court member asked again, genuine curiosity lacing their voice this time. It was posed as if it'd never occurred to them that a human could have the capacity to plot and scheme and hunt the same—if not better—than they could themselves.

Rhysand did not bother to contain his mirth when he responded. "She's building a trap."

"But the Middengard—"

"Relies on its scent to see," he said, still smiling. Feyre turned as if she could feel the weight of his gaze on her back and he relished the burn of her glare. _If looks could kill._ "And Feyre just became invisible."

Feyre raised her hand and made a gesture that would have made the well-bred ladies of her realm faint with horror. Then, she turned her back to him once again and began to trace her steps through the labyrinth. A creature on the hunt with a single prey in mind.

As a group of faeries with frosty-blue skin and black eyes had taken to mocking the Wyrm in one far corner of the maze, he knew it wouldn't take her long to discover where the beast was hiding. He watched her, studied each of her steps, and again swallowed that primal, protective instinct, the urge to drop into the trenches and fight the creature off with her.

Only Amarantha, whose sickly sweet perfume he could smell from his seat feet away, kept him rooted where he sat. He reconsidered. No, not Amarantha.

_Cassian. Azriel. Mor. Amren. _

Rhysand closed his eyes, only for the briefest of seconds, and remembered what Velaris sounded like at night. The way it smelled and tasted and how he longed to return. He'd give anything to show it to Feyre.

When he opened them again, Rhys forced himself to sink into his chair, his elbow planted on the arm of his chair with his head propped up. He ran his thumb over his bottom lip.

It appeared the mud trick had worked as it hadn't scented her yet, even as she remained only several rows of layered mud over, and continued ramming itself into the walls just below the fae that taunted it.

Feyre made quick work shoving bones the size of her arm near the corners of turns that were especially sharp.

When she was finished with that, she inched her way toward the Middengard once more. Her back was pressed against the walls, her pace slow and calculated. He could only imagine how proud Cassian and Azriel would have been of this human girl who fought and calculated her battles like she'd come out of the womb fighting for each and every scrap thrown her way.

And she _had_. Feyre was a hungry soul who'd known little more than the bitter taste of survival. Rhysand remembered dreaming of the first time she'd left their home for the woods. He'd ghosted after her, stepped where she stepped in the snow, and squinted through the wall's haze to see her tears of frustration as she struggled to string a bow she'd crudely fashioned from an elm tree.

His family would have taken one look at Feyre in the pit and loved her. They would've seen a kindred soul in the human girl and welcomed her into the Court of Dreams without a second thought.

Feyre finally reached her launching point. She'd set her trap and placed the remaining bones in all the right places. Now, all she had to do was draw the Wyrm out.

She drew the bone-sword from her back and drew the blade across her palm. Blood pooled there and she fisted her hand, letting it gather to scent the creature.

The crowd fell silent as those unholy slits on the Middengard's face twitched and it set off. Feyre waited and Rhysand's heart picked up pace as the monster slithered in the opposite direction—and then it was barreling toward her, toward the opposite side of the wall where Feyre stood.

Rhysand opened his mouth a millimeter. Then slammed it shut. _He couldn't speak. _He couldn't warn her. Amarantha would look too closely at him if he—her _whore_—were to thwart her game.

But Lucien, the High Fae she knew from the Spring Court—he could. He'd already risked himself to heal her broken nose. It wouldn't be a stretch for him to save her once again.

Rhysand didn't spare a second thought before he launched himself into the fae's mind, barreling toward the gate that seperated them.

Lucien's mind was guarded by a brassy gate, illuminated by torches that cast long shadows, and decorated with green vines that snaked through the railing and choked the bars. Rhysand slipped past it easily and whispered the command, disguised it as his own idea.

"_TO YOUR LEFT!" _Lucien shouted and Rhysand tensed as Feyre began to run.

The Middengard burst through the wall, snapping its jaws where Feyre had once stood.

Once Feyre began to run, she did not stop. She didn't pause to look behind her. She ran, sliding through the mud, entirely consumed with the task at hand. When she reached a corner she'd marked with a bone, she latched onto it and used it to launch herself around the bend, maintaining her momentum.

Rhys bit down on his tongue. _You wondrous, wicked girl._

She latched onto the second bone-rail and sped down another pathway. The crowd screamed, jeered as the Middengard followed her, a great and terrible force that sought the blood Feyre had offered.

Feyre flew around the final turn and shot down the dark passage. Her face twisted, those eyes burning brighter and hotter than anything he'd ever seen before. _Cauldron_, she was magnificent. Rhysand sucked in a breath.

Feyre launched herself above the pit and Rhys was sure she was going to sprout wings and fly like she'd been born Illyrian and not human as she hung there in the air.

When she plummeted into the darkness, he heard her cry out. And when the Middengard followed, a writhing, horrific mass of pink flesh, he froze. Didn't dare hope. Didn't dare breath.

The cavern went deathly silent.

There was no sound. Not from Feyre. Not from the Middengard Wyrn.

And then finally Feyre pushed herself up from the ground. The creature was limp before her, its mouth still torn open like it dared to consume her in death. She edged around the beast, reached her ladder, and pulled herself out of the pit once more.

She stumbled back through the trenches, toward Amarantha's platform. When she stopped before it, mere feet away from him, she lowered her chin, stared up at them from below her brow, and bared her teeth.

Rhys could see the challenge in her eyes, the message they so clearly shouted. _You asked me to prove my love. I have—and then some._

And even though it hadn't been him she'd fought for, even though his—even though she'd fought for another male, pride simmered in his veins as bright and wild as a shooting star.

Feyre had killed the Middengard and she was the most magnificent thing he'd seen.

"Well," Amarantha said, smirking. "I suppose anyone could have done that."

She took a few running steps, paused and then with all of her might, she threw that piece of bone until it landed at Amarantha's feet. It pierced the ground, splattering mud all over the woman's pristine, white dress. There was a moment of silence where only the sound of fire crackling in torches echoed through the cavern. Her rage was strong enough, devastating enough, that Rhysand felt it without seeking it out.

Rhysand expected outrage. A finger thrusted forward as she demanded Feyre's head on a spike, both for the death of the Middengard Wyrm and the bone javelin. But, all she did was smile and then she clicked her tongue.

"Naughty," she said and Feyre bared her teeth one more time, her eyes simmering like hellfire.

Then, a tickle at his ear. And a voice, one he knew as well as his own, whispered—

_If you don't marry her, you stupid prick, I will._

And for the first time in a long time, Rhysand wanted to laugh. He settled for a smile that he wrote off as the joy of winning a rather large sum of gold.

* * *

_fin._


End file.
